StephenA

However if I donate to the Church Roof appeal it's to save the church roof - it's not to buy a new font, organ, altar etc....

Unless the person in front of you gets upset and angry because you are helping them (I'm not talking about winding up paddles here - just dropping paddles and opening and closing gates). One person with that attitude ended up with 10 boats behind them on Audlem the other week.

I bet it doesn't have (and won't have) a trading licence which is what I believe it will need if he is going to run a business from it. Plus appropriate insurance and safety checks...

62 foot ( max length of L&L mainline locks - but some would say don't try over 60 foot ) by 6 foot 10 (standard narrow lock) and Foxton and Watford stop you getting a broad boat from Leeds down onto the GU Canal

Sounds perfectly reasonable to me on both counts.

Well known by whom though? How is a stranger to the area supposed to know which areas are good and bad? Apart from the obvious signs.....

Funding of sites like this, and Canalplan, and others is always going to be an issue - either you rely on donations and / or adverts (which is why Canalplan has them) or you turn your site into a subscription style site which will discourage casual users. Most of these sites are not run as commercial ventures and are in many ways a labour of love. When Daniel was having problems with his hosting company a while back I really felt for him - we've been there too and for something that people are getting for nothing people can get remarkably upset when things go wrong.

Remember when taking photos with mirrors near by to wear enough clothes.... I do like "wide beam narrow boat" as a description

Google is your friend....

Because ghosts tend not to use discussion forums (unless they are Michael Pennington from Oldbury of course)

That was to show the problem with the builder field. Looking for anything with looking like nico you get: +----------------------+----------------+ | builder | count(builder) | +----------------------+----------------+ | Nicolls Of Runnymede | 1 | | NICOPLUS | 1 | +----------------------+----------------+

Don't forget that details like builder aren't mandatory information for CRT (in fact 11,000 entries in the Boat Register for CRT boats have "Unknown" as the builder) - and as its "freetext" then you get all sorts of problems with it. Once I get the CRT data for this year I'm going to try to do some more data tidying. For example: +----------------------+----------------+ | builder | count(builder) | +----------------------+----------------+ | BCN BOAT SERV/NICHOL | 1 | | NICHOLAS SHEEN | 1 | | NICHOLS | 1 | | NICHOLS OF YORK | 2 | | NICHOLSON | 1 | | P.NICHOLS STEEL BTS | 178 | | PETER NICHOLLS | 12 | | PETER NICHOLLS YACHT | 2 | | PETER NICHOLS | 7 | | PETER NICHOLS STEEL | 1 | | PHILP E NICHOLSON | 1 | | PORTER NICHOLLS | 1 | +----------------------+----------------+

I too find it highly unlikely that CRT would pick email addresses at random and send them a link to a restricted beta of a web site. O/S map licences aren't that cheap. They'd be much better off using Open Street map .

We saw one heading into Birmingham right before the Conservative conference last year....

My brother took Mintball down the Anderton Lift in June... apparently that system is also completely disconnected from the rest of the CRT systems - so you can't just provide your Registration number.... its the same farce there too.

We were at Tom's moorings in Market Drayton. All the paper work came to me and my wife as we paid for the moorings. CRT take over and write to my brother at his address (that's the address CRT have for the boat registration). So CRT know our boat details (obviously) but apparently we have to provide ALL of that information again i Then in the section where it says "Please boxes in this line blank" they written things in! How can two parts of one organisation apparently be so disconnected from each other? I

You'd stated that it was half of what you paid just to cruise the Lee and Stort ( 48 miles and 33 locks ). A River Wey licence covers just those 19 miles where as the CRT licences cover a lot more. Is there any proof that the Wey is more efficient when it comes to maintenance ? But as has been pointed out the River Licence doesn't just cover the River Stort - it is part of a bigger licence. If you split the costs of keeping the L&S running only across the boats registered as moored on it I suspect it might be a lot more.

Combined licence for a 50 foot boat for a year on the Avon is £266 (paid in Jan), £271 (paid in Feb), £542 (if you are on their waters and don't have a licence) and £217 if you have a CRT licence. So 1/3 of the cost of a CRT Canal and River licence for a year (£775) to do just the Avon.....

Big difference between a charity and a business...

Their new design is typical of the current trend in Websites. If you argue that a web presence is important in this day and age and you want to encourage people to visit the waterways (for what ever reason and please lets not get into a "walkers don't pay anything" argument) then you need a responsive and interactive website. Yes it will have cost some money but, like the TV adverts, sometimes you have to pay money out to get money in... Justifying spend on intangible benefits is never easy but it has to be done.

so 50% of your CRT licence fee to cover 19 miles and 16 locks..... The National Trust took a very different attitude to the Stratford Canal when it was under their stewardship.... As for paddle gear - are you seriously suggesting CRT should replace all their paddle gear?

Its all done using a fluxcapacitor ! I was wondering if there was a "Mr Fusion" hiding somewhere...

You can't buy it now........

Seems the max output of those is 70 Watts per panel. So that's 630 Watts from 9 panels if its those. Not a bad amount of power but enough to drive their stated electrical load?

you mean on the side of the raised section? I think they're air vents. For an solar powered boat there seems to be a distinct lack of heavy duty cable connectors (or any cables for that matter). Those solar panels look like they're a few mill thick and glued to the roof.